Services are important but, in general, do not motivate people to join.
The WIA has sold itself for many years on the provision of services, magazine, QSL bureaus, in some states repeaters, in some states packet networks etc. The officers of the WIA, including myself, have been consistently frustrated by the apparent indifference to our efforts.

Members say they are important but despite this there appears to be no correlation between more and better services and increased membership percentages.

I have now formed the view that services for the WIA are like management hygiene factors. An absence of services will cause people to leave. However, many good services will not cause people to join or stay!

There must be other significant factors at work causing people to join, leave or stay.

Put Amateur Radio back into the WIA
My thanks to many correspondents and also members attending the March VK5 WIA general meeting for helping to focus ideas in this area.

The glue that holds us together is amateur radio. Without amateur radio there would be no WIA and no need for the WIA. Yet the WIA as an organisation seems to have forgotten this.

I alluded to this in my original paper when I spoke about the movement of Amateur Radio meetings and activities from the WIA divisional meetings to the local radio club and the changing character of the WIA that resulted.  I am now convinced this has gone too far into concentration on administration or what has been described to me as "the business of amateur radio". Look through the minutes of WIA meetings from the national convention on down and they are all about administration. What happened to Amateur Radio?

The focus of the WIA should be on radio, supported by competent administration.

Administration such as budgets, accounts, constitutions etc are merely tools we use to achieve the goals of our organisation. There are some, at the most influential levels in the WIA, who have made these things into holy writ to an extent that the admin tail seems to have been wagging the amateur radio dog.

As this debate has progressed I have become more certain that we should replace our state level of administration with a set of technical committees or interest groups operating on the national level. They can foster their part of the hobby, involve newcomers in it as well as publicising new activities, modes and processes.

The new organisation should be taken as a way to streamline and make easier the work of the many volunteers in our hobby.  That also means keeping the formal structures, processes and administration to an essential minimum. As well as making sure members have clearly defined lines of communications into the organisation.

The WIA must also be seen to be optimistic about the future of Amateur Radio and fostering the spirit of excitement about new things.

We should put Amateur Radio first. Once we have decided what we should do then we can look at how it can or should be administered. Changes that may be required to budgets, accounts, or constitutions can then be worked out and recommended by the executive.

I cannot state this strongly enough. We must decide what is best for our hobby. Then, and only then, should we consider the needs of business administration.

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